9 ms·

Using Emacs and/or Vim is also a test of how much you care, primarily because they're not the default anymore, so anyone who uses them cares enough about their

by msla 9y ago

Using Emacs and/or Vim is also a test of how much you care, primarily because they're not the default anymore, so anyone who uses them cares enough about their programming environment to use a non-default editor, and one which has a rather higher barrier to entry than most at that. (Although, to be honest, using the GUI version of GNU Emacs as a Notepad replacement is possible: Just ignore the keyboard commands and interact solely via the menu up top. You even get access to at least some neat major modes this way. Still, Emacs isn't the default, so anyone using Emacs probably knows why, and won't be the kind of person to use it without getting more out of it.)

jcelerier 9y ago
> Using Emacs and/or Vim is also a test of how much you care, primarily because they're not the default anymore, so anyone who uses them cares enough about their programming environment to use a non-default editor, and one which has a rather higher barrier to entry than most at that. Depends, at the school I went to (less than five years ago), you start by learning emacs in the first month. A lot of people just stay with emacs for the remaining of the three years, because that's the first thing they learn.
- pen2l 9y ago
  Oh wow, there are schools that introduce these tools? I know that every SE degree includes a course on practices in which they go over version control, some diff tools, etc. but I wasn't aware of a school teaching vim/emacs. May I ask which school it is that is doing this?
  - josteink 9y ago
    At uni, that was what we were taught. On FreeBSD desktop-machines no less. But that was 15 years ago. I have no idea what they teach now.
  - pswilson14 9y ago
    Not OP, but UC San Diego taught both Vim and Emacs when I was there 5 years ago
  - CalChris 9y ago
    Berkeley 'taught' emacs in 61A when it used SICP and we programmed in Scheme, taught being in lower case here, italicized and in quotation marks. The idea that a university course would teach an editor is a bit much. I think there was a cheat sheet passed out by the TAs in section. My point is that this was at Berkeley where vi originated 40+ years ago.
  - jcelerier 9y ago
    ENSEIRB-MATMECA, a french engineering school
    - jhgb 9y ago
      > ENSEIRB-MATMECA Are you sure that's actual French?
      - jcelerier 9y ago
        pretty much :p https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%89cole_nationale_sup%C3%A9rieure_d%E2%80%99%C3%A9lectronique,_informatique,_t%C3%A9l%C3%A9communications,_math%C3%A9matique_et_m%C3%A9canique_de_Bordeaux https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%89cole_nationale_sup%C3%A9...
  - deong 9y ago
    When I was an undergrad, we were "taught" tools like Emacs and Vim by being dropped into a systems programming class where we were told to telnet into a university server to complete the assignments, and "oh, you'll need an editor. I think Emacs and vi are there. You'll figure it out."
  - kccqzy 9y ago
    UCLA did, in its 35L class. You are required to do a series of text editing tasks and record keystrokes. I should note that the professor, Paul Eggert, is the maintainer of many GNU projects.
pen2l 9y ago
It does appear though that for on-site interviews, folks using emacs did not do well. > Using Emacs and/or Vim is also a test of how much you care, primarily because they're not the default anymore That's probably true, but I want to add that I used emacs/vim because I hung around with folks who looked down on other tools. So, it wasn't so much that I cared about my tools as it was about I wanted to fit in.
komali2 9y ago
I dunno man, I care enough to spend a big chunk of my free time improving my code ability. Thing is, I find it easier to use hotkeys in vscode than in emacs. I'm trying both right now and vscode just seems to allow me to do the things I want to do without like learning lisp or something. In terms of "caring," I care enough to learn literally all of the hotkeys available by default in vscode, including some I added and changed. I'm a f'n beast in that IDE :P
- hashkb 9y ago
  You don't know what you're missing. Want to be a real beast? Learn vim and emacs, both. You want an editor where "literally all the hotkeys" is literally meaningless.
  - ShabbosGoy 9y ago
    Or you could just use Spacemacs.
    - erikbye 9y ago
      Not sure why this got downvoted. While I prefer my own customized Emacs or Vim, Spacemacs is pretty decent from the jump. You just need to activate the layer for your language.
    - bfrog 9y ago
      This is what I've been doing and I have to say its pretty great. There's always a few things that drive you crazy of course, but helm+projectile, flymake, and such are just so damn useful over using vim's poor attempts at the same.
  - coldtea 9y ago
    >You don't know what you're missing. Or it's diminishing returns, and most of it is busywork (fiddling with settings) and the pride of customization -- as opposed to any real tremendous productivity gains. And I say that as someone who've used Vi(m) for 15+ years in platforms ranging from SunOS (pre Solaris), to Linux, Windows and OS X. I've also fiddled with Emacs for a year or so before (in uni) but it never really stuck. I use ST3 and Vim (terminal sessions) now and don't find Vim offering any huge productivity boost. For all the folklore it's just an editor with some nice ideas, and a lot of random stuff throw in stolen from this or that earlier environment (read how Joy came up with vi).
josteink 9y ago
> Although, to be honest, using the GUI version of GNU Emacs as a Notepad replacement is possible: Just ignore the keyboard commands and interact solely via the menu up top. You even get access to at least some neat major modes this way. Sure that's possible. And I realize that you're being hypothetical, but if that's how you're going to use Emacs, you're not going to see much gain in your productivity ;)
- bitwize 9y ago
  Well, if you're gonna train a cat to walk on a leash, the first thing you do is drape a harness on its body, to get it used to the feel and smell of the thing before it walks anywhere.
pavon 9y ago
My experience is the opposite. The reason that I use vim is because I frequently have to work in environments that I ssh into, where X forwarding is blocked or very poor due to latency. It became too painful to constantly switch back and forth between vim, emacs, eclipse, netbeans, etc, so I gave up and settled on the lowest common denominator.
- defined 9y ago
  Not to mention that many remote server environments may not even have X installed, or graphics cards, for that matter. I started using vi for much the same reason you did, having to troubleshoot via ssh (and telnet before that) in many variants of UNIX (tm) systems. When I got hold of Vim it was like Christmas for me. I started learning emacs some time back, but the learning curve (and fighting against Vim muscle memory) vs. needing to get work done for money soon convinced me to try again another day.
- AlexCoventry 9y ago
  Emacs works fine in no-X environments, FWIW. You're more likely to find vi just works without installing anything extra, though.

by msla 9y ago

jcelerier 9y ago

> Using Emacs and/or Vim is also a test of how much you care, primarily because they're not the default anymore, so anyone who uses them cares enough about their programming environment to use a non-default editor, and one which has a rather higher barrier to entry than most at that. Depends, at the school I went to (less than five years ago), you start by learning emacs in the first month. A lot of people just stay with emacs for the remaining of the three years, because that's the first thing they learn.

pen2l 9y ago
Oh wow, there are schools that introduce these tools? I know that every SE degree includes a course on practices in which they go over version control, some diff tools, etc. but I wasn't aware of a school teaching vim/emacs. May I ask which school it is that is doing this?
- josteink 9y ago
  At uni, that was what we were taught. On FreeBSD desktop-machines no less. But that was 15 years ago. I have no idea what they teach now.
- pswilson14 9y ago
  Not OP, but UC San Diego taught both Vim and Emacs when I was there 5 years ago
- CalChris 9y ago
  Berkeley 'taught' emacs in 61A when it used SICP and we programmed in Scheme, taught being in lower case here, italicized and in quotation marks. The idea that a university course would teach an editor is a bit much. I think there was a cheat sheet passed out by the TAs in section. My point is that this was at Berkeley where vi originated 40+ years ago.
- jcelerier 9y ago
  ENSEIRB-MATMECA, a french engineering school
  - jhgb 9y ago
    > ENSEIRB-MATMECA Are you sure that's actual French?
    - jcelerier 9y ago
      pretty much :p https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%89cole_nationale_sup%C3%A9rieure_d%E2%80%99%C3%A9lectronique,_informatique,_t%C3%A9l%C3%A9communications,_math%C3%A9matique_et_m%C3%A9canique_de_Bordeaux https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%89cole_nationale_sup%C3%A9...
- deong 9y ago
  When I was an undergrad, we were "taught" tools like Emacs and Vim by being dropped into a systems programming class where we were told to telnet into a university server to complete the assignments, and "oh, you'll need an editor. I think Emacs and vi are there. You'll figure it out."
- kccqzy 9y ago
  UCLA did, in its 35L class. You are required to do a series of text editing tasks and record keystrokes. I should note that the professor, Paul Eggert, is the maintainer of many GNU projects.

pen2l 9y ago

It does appear though that for on-site interviews, folks using emacs did not do well. > Using Emacs and/or Vim is also a test of how much you care, primarily because they're not the default anymore That's probably true, but I want to add that I used emacs/vim because I hung around with folks who looked down on other tools. So, it wasn't so much that I cared about my tools as it was about I wanted to fit in.

komali2 9y ago

I dunno man, I care enough to spend a big chunk of my free time improving my code ability. Thing is, I find it easier to use hotkeys in vscode than in emacs. I'm trying both right now and vscode just seems to allow me to do the things I want to do without like learning lisp or something. In terms of "caring," I care enough to learn literally all of the hotkeys available by default in vscode, including some I added and changed. I'm a f'n beast in that IDE :P

hashkb 9y ago
You don't know what you're missing. Want to be a real beast? Learn vim and emacs, both. You want an editor where "literally all the hotkeys" is literally meaningless.
- ShabbosGoy 9y ago
  Or you could just use Spacemacs.
  - erikbye 9y ago
    Not sure why this got downvoted. While I prefer my own customized Emacs or Vim, Spacemacs is pretty decent from the jump. You just need to activate the layer for your language.
  - bfrog 9y ago
    This is what I've been doing and I have to say its pretty great. There's always a few things that drive you crazy of course, but helm+projectile, flymake, and such are just so damn useful over using vim's poor attempts at the same.
- coldtea 9y ago
  >You don't know what you're missing. Or it's diminishing returns, and most of it is busywork (fiddling with settings) and the pride of customization -- as opposed to any real tremendous productivity gains. And I say that as someone who've used Vi(m) for 15+ years in platforms ranging from SunOS (pre Solaris), to Linux, Windows and OS X. I've also fiddled with Emacs for a year or so before (in uni) but it never really stuck. I use ST3 and Vim (terminal sessions) now and don't find Vim offering any huge productivity boost. For all the folklore it's just an editor with some nice ideas, and a lot of random stuff throw in stolen from this or that earlier environment (read how Joy came up with vi).

josteink 9y ago

> Although, to be honest, using the GUI version of GNU Emacs as a Notepad replacement is possible: Just ignore the keyboard commands and interact solely via the menu up top. You even get access to at least some neat major modes this way. Sure that's possible. And I realize that you're being hypothetical, but if that's how you're going to use Emacs, you're not going to see much gain in your productivity ;)

bitwize 9y ago
Well, if you're gonna train a cat to walk on a leash, the first thing you do is drape a harness on its body, to get it used to the feel and smell of the thing before it walks anywhere.

pavon 9y ago

My experience is the opposite. The reason that I use vim is because I frequently have to work in environments that I ssh into, where X forwarding is blocked or very poor due to latency. It became too painful to constantly switch back and forth between vim, emacs, eclipse, netbeans, etc, so I gave up and settled on the lowest common denominator.

defined 9y ago
Not to mention that many remote server environments may not even have X installed, or graphics cards, for that matter. I started using vi for much the same reason you did, having to troubleshoot via ssh (and telnet before that) in many variants of UNIX (tm) systems. When I got hold of Vim it was like Christmas for me. I started learning emacs some time back, but the learning curve (and fighting against Vim muscle memory) vs. needing to get work done for money soon convinced me to try again another day.
AlexCoventry 9y ago
Emacs works fine in no-X environments, FWIW. You're more likely to find vi just works without installing anything extra, though.